Herald Blogs

BY MARISOL MEDINA

SOUTH FLORIDA NEWS SERVICE

When Raul Morin was 15, he sat in front of the class jock in school, “the wrestler, football player, big, beefy guy,” who bullied him for being gay.

“I was the class nerd, the closeted white elephant no one could talk about,” said Morin, now 33.

The bully would write the word “fag” on the back of his shirt, in light pen ink, and Morin would continue the rest of the day unknowingly sporting the insult on his back.

“It certainly didn’t enhance my self-esteem,” said Morin, who is now president of the board of the Miami Gay Men’s Chorus, a community-based organization that has decided to take on bullying as part of a five-year program of children’s productions.

This year’s production is Oliver Button is a Sissy, a musical based on a children’s book targeted to kids ages 5-11. The play, which is meant to be the chorus’ anti-bullying voice, premiered on Feb. 25 at the Coral Gables Congregational Church.

BY JONATHAN LEMIRE AND MEGHAN BARR

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK -- A weekend of St. Patrick's Day revelry and tensions over the exclusion of gays in some of the celebrations was culminating Monday in New York, where Guinness beer and the city's new mayor planned to sit out the world's largest parade celebrating Irish heritage.

Mayor Bill de Blasio held the traditional St. Patrick's Day breakfast at Gracie Mansion with the Irish prime minister, Enda Kenny, but planned to boycott the parade, which doesn't allow expressions of gay identity. Boston's new mayor, Martin Walsh, also opted out of that city's parade Sunday after talks broke down that would have allowed a gay veterans group to march.